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New Castle County committee debates draft data-center rules after heated public comments on retroactivity, noise and water
Summary
A Land Use Committee discussion of ordinance 25-1-01 focused on noise and light standards, setback options, removal of formal agency coordination and the decision not to include retroactivity; dozens of residents urged applying the ordinance to projects already in the pipeline and raised concerns about water, generator emissions and electric-grid impacts.
Councilman Carter, sponsor of ordinance 25-1-01, presented a draft zoning standard for hyperscale data centers to the New Castle County Land Use Committee on March 10, describing a package of changes intended to balance community protections and feasibility for developers.
Carter summarized the draft’s substantive shifts: the ordinance removes detailed, prescriptive noise controls and “reverts back to using the existing noise protections under Chapter 22,” tightens lighting by reverting to a roughly 0.1 foot‑candle standard at property lines with downward‑directed fixtures, drops a proposed power‑use benchmark in favor of LEED certification, and creates a default 1,000‑foot residential buffer that could be reduced to 500 feet if an applicant supplies an approved noise‑attenuation study. He also said he removed formal interagency coordination language from the code and expects staff to work with state agencies using an informal checklist.
The sponsor’s retreat from including the pending‑ordinance (retroactivity) clause…
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